Week 6: The ancient art of rhetoric and persuasion Before coming to class, bring a print advertisement that you believe persuades the reader rhetorically. Explain your case using the concepts learnt this week.

Rhetoric refers as form of persuasion.  Advertising meanwhile, has been comprehensively commended and censured (Perloff, 2010). With the existence of many forms of advertising, numerous companies have well utilised its use and objective to reach as well as to persuade the audience. Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.” This further illustrates the importance of advertisement to not only be remarkably persuasive, but it must also have an argument followed, thus defining and completing the concept of rhetoric in advertising.

The purpose of the advertisement is to encourage people to buy the Nike product. The audience in this context is meant for athletes and Nike Consumer. Nike has customers of all ages and gender. The audience can be high school student in a football team, young woman who loves to run, an old man who enjoy golf and others.

According to McQuarrie & Philips (2008), rhetoric in advertising is more concerned with style than content. Figure 1 proves this statement that the print advertisement has its focus on style more than content. For instance, the advertisement uses balance by choosing picture with an empty space. The boy peeing on the wall and his dog occupy the left side of the page. This gives the designer the opportunity to insert their own text on the right side. This balances the overall structure of the design and conveys the message to the viewer. The message the designer has is plain and simple, “just do it” means just do it and get it or buy it. The advertisement use asymmetrical balance. It counterbalance with contrast by placing the logo in black bold letters with the red check mark on an off white wall, in order to catch the viewer’s eye.

Whalen (1996) states that the study and practice of persuasion is not new. It must be noted that print advertisement is not something that has been recently developed. In fact, any advertising concept or style has existed since the distant past with different rhetorical styles, such as rhymes, repetition of a phrase, antithesis or synthesis

As it is essential to be persuasive in advertising, it is also vital to have an argument to finalize rhetoric in advertising. Advertising style consists of the medium, genre, strategies of production and creative imageries to show an argument.

Reference:

McQuarrie, E.F., & Phillips. (2008). Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric.

Perloff, R.M. (2010). The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 21^stCentury. New York: Routledge

Whalen, D.J. (1996). I See What You Mean: Persuasive Business Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage